Dental implants have become popular in recent years as a way to provide permanent artificial teeth to patients that lost some or all of their teeth. Implant dentistry involves the restoration of one or more teeth in a patient's mouth using artificial components, such as dental implants and a prosthetic tooth and/or an abutment that is secured to the dental implant: the dentist drills into the patient's jaw bone and implants an artificial tooth root, i.e., a dental implant. Then, natural bone, by a process called osseointegration, fuses with this implant. An artificial crown can then be placed onto the implant.
Due to the hazards of improper drilling, computerized surgical guides have become a reliable method for performing implant surgery. This guides use computerized tomography and three-dimensional (3D) materials fabrication technology (e.g., computer controlled steriolithography, computer numerical control (CNC) machining, and the like) to create a custom implant drilling guide. This way, the guide provides control of the buco-lingual, mesial-distal and vertical placement of the surgical drills. Following the drilling process, there is often a need to further remove bone excess around the implant socket. This bone removal can be done by manually removing the bone excess after drilling according to rough estimation; creating another computerized reduction guide prior to the implant drilling guide; or removing the bone excess after screwing the implant into place.
However, each way has its disadvantages. For instance, manually removing the bone excess after drilling according to rough estimation is highly risky, due to the risk of excessive, undesired bone removal; creating another computerized reduction guide prior to the implant drilling guide requires the production of an additional computerized surgical guide just for the bone removal step, which dramatically increases the cost of the treatment and prolongs the overall duration of the procedure (i.e., by removing the first guide and placing the second one); and removing the bone excess after screwing the implant into place, particularly in the surrounding of the implant, might damage the neck surface of the implant.
Therefore, there is an unmet need for developing new, simple and cost efficient ways for removal of excess jaw-bone around an implant socket.